


Mimicry

by J_E_McCormick



Category: Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: AU, Gen, I've had this idea for a while but only just wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:31:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_E_McCormick/pseuds/J_E_McCormick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Owen!!” Barry shouts, leaning over the railings of the walkway. “Get outta there!”</p><p>“We’ve got to try and get-”</p><p>“There’s no-one in there. No-one’s missing.” Barry cuts him off urgently. For a moment Owen doesn’t understand – they heard someone scream. They heard shouts for help. Someone must be in the pen, surely…</p><p>Or, have you imagined the terrifying possibilities of raptors with the ability to mimic?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mimicry

**Author's Note:**

> Boy am I late to writing Jurassic World fic. It’s not for trying though.
> 
> Anyway, I had this idea a while back, just after the film came out. Someone asked a question about whether any dinosaurs might have had mimicking abilities, and the idea of the raptors mimicking human speech, along with their established ability to set traps, was so awesome I couldn’t resist. Then I binge-wrote this in like, an hour and a half.
> 
> How feasible it is is probably questionable, but these "Velociraptors" are also 6 foot tall and featherless so I think I can use artistic license to say they can mimic human voices.
> 
> Hopefully it’s good and you guys enjoy it!!

It’s a normal day at the park – Owen is lounging around on the walkway above the raptor pen, chatting with Barry. Training the raptors was starting to hit a rough patch – the girls were all bickering over their places in the pecking order. Echo has already gotten in a few scraps trying to improve her place in the pack, and Blue has started hissing at him and ignoring him when he tries to instruct her.

“You’ll just have to remain firm, make sure she knows you’re boss – maybe you can get a cattle prod or something, give her a shock if she disobeys.” Barry suggests.

“Yeah, right, and get torn open for the trouble.” Owen snorts.

“You know they fight to get dominance.” Barry reminds him, but Owen still waves away the idea.

“I don’t want to start a fight with her, because I know she’ll win. And she’ll probably know that too. Besides-”

Owen is cut off as they hear a loud scream from down in the pen. He rushes over to the edge of the walkway, peering down and trying to see what’s happening – there’s nothing more than disturbed earth where it looks like something has been dragged away.

“Shit.” Owen swears between his teeth. The raptors have done this before – they attack humans. They managed to save one guy who got his shoulder mangled through the bars when he turned his back and didn’t pay enough attention to where Delta was; they recovered one guy with huge gashes torn in his belly, bleeding and not even screaming anymore from the shock. He just about survived with emergency medical attention.

Apparently, this was expected of the raptors. They were dangerous animals, they knew that from the park before – the raptors, that had been what Grant and Sattler talked about most when interview crews managed to pester them enough. And then there had been Sorna; Malcolm had told in detail how a pack managed to pick off an entire crew, and almost got him and his girlfriend and his daughter too. Grant had briefly spoken about the intelligence of the raptors after his own experience on Sorna. Owen watched that interview a few times when he was brought onto the crew.

 _Highly intelligent, co-ordinated, able to communicate in a complex fashion, like dolphins or whales or humans_ …

And now they’ve attacked another one. God knows how he got in there – maybe he fell off the walkway, maybe they dragged him in through the bars, maybe he had gone in thinking the pen was empty – but they had to try and get him out, preferably alive and in one piece.

Though, if they’d managed to drag him off into the trees, the chances of that were low.

“Help! _Help_!” Another scream sounds out from in the foliage, and Owen rushes to get down on the ground so he can go in with the security team.

“ _Go, go, go_!!”

The security team packs into the small holding cage, Owen pushing himself in with them. He curses how slowly the gates move as they wait for the first one to close before the second one opens. The team swarm in, tranquiliser guns held ready; Owen had insisted on no tazers being brought into the enclosure, and most of the men had agreed that it was better to knock the girls out than just piss them off with a few hundred volts of electricity. Some of the men stationed up on the walkway still had them though – for emergencies only per Owen’s instructions.

The men fan out, making sure no-one would be snuck up on. They edge towards the tree cover, where the drag mark disappears into the lush growth of plants. Jonathan, one of the men who usually assists Owen, uses his tranq gun to push aside some of the ferns, inspects the path of flattened plants the raptors left.

“There’s no blood…” He says, frowning. Usually, there is blood – and a lot of it.

“Owen!!” Barry shouts, leaning over the railings of the walkway. “Get outta there!”

“We’ve got to try and get-”

“There’s no-one in there. No-one’s missing.” Barry cuts him off urgently. For a moment Owen doesn’t understand – they heard someone scream. They heard shouts for help. Someone must be in the pen, surely…

The loud screech he hears behind him is not human. He spins around to see Blue leaping out from the treeline, in clear attack mode; her claws are spread, her legs brought up high as she leaps, her sickle claw pulled all the way back ready to swing forwards and hook into skin and flesh. Jonathan has just enough time to scream and attempt to take a step back before she’s on him – he doesn’t even have the chance to raise his gun to her.

“Blue! No!” Owen shouts at her, and she raises her head long enough to growl and hiss at him before trying to go for Jonathan’s neck.

Another one of the team shoots his tranq and hits Blue in the thigh, and she screeches in anger. Delta and Charlie appear out of the trees as well, hissing and hooting at the team, confrontational and angry.

“Back down! Back down!” Owen yells at them, using one of his hand signals. The raptors turn their attention to him instantly, but not to obey, rather starting to snarl rather viciously at him. “Someone grab him and get him out of here!”

Two of the team flank Owen; another grabs for their injured teammate and drags him back, away from Blue. She turns on him in an instant, but the tranquilizer is starting to take effect and the sudden turn makes her sway and stumble. Owen tries to keep half an eye on the rest of the team as they start to back away towards the gate while keeping enough attention on the pack to try and keep them in control. Jonathan yells out in pain as he’s dragged away, and then-

And then Charlie copies the noise, an amazing mimicry of a human shout. Owen can just about hear the undertone of the raptor’s vocalisations, is able to pinpoint the flaws in the illusion as he watches her perform it, but it sends a cold chill to his very core.

_Able to communicate in a complex fashion, similar to dolphins or whales or **humans** …._

Following Charlie’s lead, Delta screams as well, eerily similar to the one they heard before. They can sense that he’s made uneasy by their mimicking, he’s certain of it, because they advance on him while still echoing human shouts. Behind them, Blue barks a weak “Help… help…” from the ground where she’s collapsed as the tranquilizer takes effect.

“Owen, quickly!” One of the team calls to him, and he looks out of the corner of his eye to see he’s right near the gate. It’s half-closed – he just needs to crawl through. He backs up just a little more, still keeping his eyes on the raptors – Echo has emerged from the foliage as well, now, is hissing and growling lowly as she comes up behind her siblings.

In a second, Owen turns away and rolls under the gate, and one of the security team hit the button to close it before the raptors can pounce. Echo leaps forward and tries to shove her snout under the gate and snap at Owen, but she’s forced to pull back as the gate closes. The three raptors growl and hiss through the bars, occasionally barking a human sound – “Go, go!” “No!” “Help!”, occasionally the scream of pain from earlier.

“Christ, they can talk?” One of the security team mutters.

“A lot of birds can mimic… Sounds like these guys can too.” Owen says, running a hand through his hair. This is going to cause a lot of trouble, he can tell already.

When they get out of the pen, a medical team has already arrived to take Jonathan away to get treated – other than a few deep scratches in his shoulders and a nasty puncture wound in his side, he’s not in too serious a condition. _He’s better off than the other one, anyway,_ Owen thinks.

By evening, most of the fuss has died down. Owen has put a temporary system in place to account for all personnel so they can’t be tricked again. He’s going to have to ask for another assistant as well, but he decides that can wait until tomorrow.

He watches the pack through the bars of the pen as the sun sets. Blue has woken up from her sedative, and is wandering the pen, Delta and Charlie never too far from her. Echo has settled herself in the ferns, and watches her sisters. Occasionally, Blue will look over at Owen, meeting his eyes and chittering at him. Delta and Charlie do the same, occasionally mimicking a word, parroting the sounds to Owen in the hopes of unsettling him. He’s doing his best to get used to it, because he can’t afford a weakness for the pack to exploit.

“You are all very clever girls.” He mutters, shaking his head a little as he watches them. Blue looks at him and chitters again, and Owen can’t tell whether the “clever” he hears is his own imagination or not.

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all comments and feedback are super welcome!!


End file.
